Early action critical for babies at risk

VULNERABLE CHILDREN should be taken into care within the first six months of life if the best outcome is to be achieved, an international expert on infant and child mental health has said.

Robin Balbernie, clinical lead of the Infant Mental Health Service in Britain, was addressing a family law conference, hosted by the Legal Aid Board, titled Protecting the welfare of vulnerable children – the State's role and the court process.

He said neglect of infants was even more likely than physical abuse to lead them to be dysfunctional, violent adults.

In his presentation, “The consequences of early relationships: a view from interpersonal neurobiology”, he said the quality of early caregiving had a “long-lasting impact on how people develop, their ability to learn and their capacity to both regulate their own emotions and form satisfying relationships”.

He said that when a baby was born, the environment in which they spent their first six months to two years was critical in how their brain developed. The brains of babies born into loving, nurturing environments where they had strong attachment to a primary caregiver and where their needs were met, developed healthily.

In contrast, the development of the brains of neglected, stressed babies, whose needs were not met, was suppressed.

Babies in the care of insensitive caregivers tended to have impaired stress responses.

In an aside he said the Gina Forde method of parenting infants – where infants are “trained” to learn their crying will not be immediately responded to – was insensitive and caused stress for babies.

“Because childhood abuse and neglect occurs during the critical formative time when the brain is being physically sculpted by experience, the impact of severe stress can leave an indelible imprint. Such abuse it seems induces a cascade of molecular and neurobiological effects that irreversibly alter neural development.

“If a child needs to be removed into care the best chance of rescuing them is if that happens in the first six months of their life. If it happens after 18 months, you are pushing your luck,” he said. “The later we intervene, the more resources that have to be put in.”

In his work in Britain, pregnant women about whom social services had concerns would be helped with parenting skills before the birth of their babies. If the mother was deemed not to be responding to efforts, their baby would be taken into care within days or weeks of being born, he said.